Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom

designed to help you in your everyday life.

On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual

lives.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

What is the function of worry?

One of the most timeless lines in all of the stoic writings comes from epictetus.

What upsets people is not things themselves, he says, but they're judgments of things.

And it's a powerful idea, and it's one made more transcendent by the remarkable fact

that nearly every other philosophy has come to the exact same conclusion.

I talked recently to Sam Harris on the Daily Stoic Podcast, and while Harris's work is

heavily influenced by Eastern philosophical traditions, on the podcast, Harris talked

about one of the big overlaps between his work and the stoics.

Ultimately, with mindfulness, you're not doing anything other than noticing what is happening

all by itself.

Everything's arising all by itself, thoughts and stations, and it's in that recognition

that you see that the problem that you thought you needed to solve a moment ago isn't even

there, right?

The problem of your anxiety, the problem of your disappointment, the problem of your,

you know, it's always this thought-based delusion that something that's not actually present

here is, it needs to be unraveled.

You know, I'm not saying that there aren't challenging experiences.

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